


Hunted

by penguinparity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror, Mild Gore, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-04
Updated: 2010-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:13:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinparity/pseuds/penguinparity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the promp: Dean keeps seeing bloody wounds on his brother's body and on his own that disappear when he calls attention to them. Skin falling off, bone poking through, stuff like that. What is going on????</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunted

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being more slasher-gore than true horror, so my apologies for that. :x

For a heart stopping moment, when Dean sees the blood dripping down Sam’s face he thinks his brother’s started drinking blood again. But the telltale black-hole eyes that threaten to suck away Sam’s humanity in Dean’s dreams aren’t there. Instead Dean feels his stomach drop at the bloody gash running down the side of Sam’s face. The laceration is deep, nearly bisecting part of Sam’s cheek and when he starts to smile Dean gets a sickeningly clear view of Sam’s molars.

“Shit, Sammy!” Dean starts, but as soon as he blinks Sam’s face is restored to its pristine, albeit grimy, state. Sam’s smile drops away as quickly as the vision of blood. Brushing off Sam’s questioning glance, Dean shakes his head and decides that maybe skipping out on sleep last night wasn’t the greatest idea.

\--

Sleep is definitely making a move for the top of Dean’s list of things to get around to eventually. Particularly if his nightmares about Sam have starting showing up while he’s awake. But his need for sleep is momentarily superceded by the desire for a shower when they finally get back to their motel that night. He turns the water up as high as it will go, the anemic water heater barely pushing the temperature above uncomfortable. Dean is starting to relax into the heat, rinsing off the hotel’s shampoo, when he looks down to see the water slowly swirling red into the drain. He can see pieces of his flesh puffing up under the water and sloughing off in large, bloody chunks. Bits of his skin have started to clog the drain, causing the water to slowly swirl in an increasingly larger red whirlpool at the bottom of the tub. Half the skin below his knees is gone and Dean feels a sickening lurch as another swirl of water reveals the bones of his toes.

Dean scrambles out of the shower spray, spraying water, blood and bits of flesh everywhere as he stumbles into the wall. Screaming for Sam, Dean slips and collapses onto the bathroom floor as his body registers the sick sensation of his bones hitting tile. Sam bursts through the door a second later, shotgun in hand, to find Dean panting naked and wet on the floor.

“What?” Sam asks when his quick scan of the bathroom fails to reveal anything beyond his brother sitting in a pool of spreading water on the floor.

“Fuck, Sammy, my legs! Get the towels, I’m bleeding all over the place,” Dean nearly yells. He grabs at one of the towels hanging above him on the rack and tries to wrap it around his leg.

“Dean…?” Sam asks with hesitant confusion. He crouches down next to his brother and grabs Dean’s shoulder. “Dean, you’re not bleeding. You’re ok.” Dean shoots him an incredulous glare of ‘are you really that fucking blind?’ before turning back to his legs. Only to stop short when confronted with his perfectly healthy, but wet, legs.

“I was bleeding,” Dean says dumbly. “What the fuck is going on? One minute half my skin is coming off in the shower and the next I’m normal.” Sam stares at him silently, the pity, guilt and resignation nearly rolling off him waves. Dean can’t stomach the look; it’s the same look Sam used to give him after the nightmares about his time in Hell.

The next morning, Dean’s sitting in the Impala outside of their motel and waiting for Sam to hurry the hell up. He’s definitely not hiding out here while Sam finishes packing up his shit because his brother is acting like an insufferable mother hen after Dean’s freak-out last night in the shower. Things are fine, no one is going insane. Dean is definitely not seeing things.

Singing along with good old Johnny Cash about rings of fire, Dean’s got his hands resting on the steering wheel, tapping along to the song. When the song hits the chorus, I fell into a burning ring of fire, Dean starts to belt it out shamelessly. Before he can start into the second line, Dean jolts at the sudden burning sensation in his hands and tries to jerk them off the steering wheel. Smoke curls up around his fingers as they sear to the suddenly scalding surface of the steering wheel. Dean can’t seem to jerk his hands free and his increasingly frantic struggle only causes more flesh to burn. He can see the skin on his fingers smoke and then turn black as the horrid stench of burning flesh fills the car to the cheerful sound of Johnny Cash. It burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire. He can’t feel the pain in his fingers anymore – the nerves must be fried Dean thinks in some detached part of his consciousness. The skin on his hands is fried almost entirely black and starting to peel away from the singed edges that used to be his nails.

Dean tries to scream but chokes on all the smoke filling the inside of the car. Even though the nerves in his fingers might be dead, the ones in his wrists and arms aren’t, where the skin is quickly blistering a mottled white and red. Dean jerks again, desperate to remove his hands. He chokes again on the smoke when he manages to get part of his hands off the steering wheel. The charred remains of his fingers are still stuck to the wheel and Dean can’t even open the door because his hands are charred and oozing stumps.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” Sam says, jerking the passenger door open. “I know you’re desperate for coffee in morning, but seriously, calm down.” Sam’s words filter in through Dean’s mind, but he’s too busy staring at his suddenly whole hands. Sensation rushes back into them, prickling like after he’d slept with his arm crushed under him for too long. The sensation is the only thing that suggests Dean hasn’t completely just hallucinated the entire thing.

“My hands were just burning,” Dean says, still staring at his unburned hands.

“Yes, Dean, I get it, you’re in a hurry and want coffee. Stop being a jackass,” Sam says, annoyance pulling at his face.

“No, the steering wheel burned my hands until they looked like your attempts at cooking. The entire car was filled with smoke from my burning flesh. Did you not see that?” Dean asks seriously. Sam blinks and opens his mouth to ask some serious question like ‘are you OK?’ and Dean suddenly wants no part of that. He throws the car into reverse and peals out of their parking space. “Seriously, Sam, the entire car might have caught fire if you’d taken any longer putting on your make up. My baby needs some gas, just like I need coffee.”

The demon they’ve been tracking gets stuck in demon trap they set pathetically easily, so it makes no sense to Dean when he looks up and sees the long bloody gashes running down the mangled remains of Sam’s left arm. Sam’s elbow is twisted at an unnatural angle and the skin on his forearm is hanging in limp shreds from the muscle underneath.

“Fuck, what happened to your arm?” Dean demands as he nearly leaps over to Sam.

“Dude, my arm is fine, it’s just a scratch,” Sam says as he looks down at his mangled arm. Dean grabs Sam by the opposite shoulder and tries to guide him to a nearby chair.

“This isn’t the time for heroics, I can see the bones in your arms!”

Sam and the demon give Dean entirely different but equally silent stares and just like that Sam’s arm is whole again save for a slight cut just above his elbow.

“Ok, seriously, bro,” Sam starts, “What the hell is going on? You keep talking about seeing injuries and weird shit that no one else is seeing.” Sam is cut off by a peal of delighted laughter from the demon.

“No one asked your opinion, so shut your pie hole,” Dean snaps, turning to stalk to the edge of the demons trap.

“Oh, the Master will just love this. He’ll be so glad to know it’s working,” the young woman possessed by a demon replies. Dean’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“What are you talking about?” He asks flatly.

“After you got your little anti-Angel charms installed, we had to get a bit more creative in our methods of finding you, dear Sam,” the demon replies as she looks past Dean to smile lasciviously at Sam. “Everyone knows the two of you always travel together and Lucifer has a guaranteed method of finding good old Dean here. Not only are hellhounds the best trackers around, they already have Dean’s scent.” The demon smiles at Dean and tilts her head to the side consideringly.

“You didn’t think they’d forget you, did you? Dean?” she asks with false sincerity. “Now that Daddy’s broken out, he’s let all the hounds out of hell. And they’re all tracking you, Dean.”

The demon laughs at whatever expression she sees on the Winchester’s faces and continues, “now, I hate to be rude but I’ve got to go give the Boss the good news!” With that the woman’s mouth opens up in a silent scream as the demon vacates her body in a black cloud. Dean and Sam are left standing in front of the now useless demon’s trap as the formerly possessed woman faints.

In the distance, Dean hears the faint howl of a hound.


End file.
